“Oh!” she says. “I didn’t think you’d dress up.”
“We thought you would,” says my Frau.
“We!” I says. “Where do you get that ‘we’?”
“If it ain’t too late we’ll run in and change,” says my Missus.
“Not me,” I says. “I didn’t go to all this trouble and expense for a splash o’ gravy. When this here uniform retires it’ll be to make room for pyjamas.”
“Come on!” says Hatch. “What’s the difference? You can pretend like you ain’t with us.”
“It don’t really make no difference,” says Mrs. Hatch.
And maybe it didn’t. But we all stood within whisperin’ distance of each other on the car goin’ in, and if you had a dollar for every word that was talked among us you couldn’t mail a postcard from Hammond to Gary. When we got off at Congress my Missus tried to thaw out the party.
“The prices is awful high, aren’t they?” she says.
“Outrageous,” says Mrs. Hatch.
Well, even if the prices was awful high, they didn’t have nothin’ on our seats. If I was in trainin’ to be a steeple jack I’d go to grand op’ra every night and leave Hatch buy my ticket. And where he took us I’d of been more at home in overalls and a sport shirt.
“How do you like Denver?” says I to the Missus, but she’d sank for the third time.
“We’re safe here,” I says to Hatch. “Them French guns can’t never reach us. We’d ought to brought more bumbs.”